EnChroma®

Healing Eye Care will soon be carrying Enchroma® glasses!

Read below to learn more about how EnChroma® glasses can help with color blindness.

OPTICS ENGINEERED FOR COLOR VISION

Part optics, part neuroscience, EnChroma glasses unlock a new world of color for people with color blindness. Our glasses are designed to make you look good, too, so better color vision can be a seamless part of your everyday routine.

The EnChroma lens technology is based on over a decade of research effort to understand the causes of color blindness and how to engineer an optical technology platform to address the problem.

HOW THE EYE SEES COLORS

The structure of the eye projects light and images onto the retina, where a dense matrix of approximately 6 million retinal cone cells turn that picture into neural signals transmitted up to the visual cortex. Each cell is ‘color specific,’ responding mainly to light of specific frequencies. The three different types of cone cells correspond to the three primary colors of light: red, green and blue.

UNDERSTANDING COLOR

The eye responds to light, but vision is formed in the brain. The visual cortex must processes a vast amount of information to decipher where objects appear and their properties such as motion, shape and color. The ability to see color is an important part of being able to see objects in situations where they are not clearly set apart from the background, such as oranges in a tree. In modern life we are also faced with the need to interpret color-coded information such as signs and lights. These are just a couple of examples of how color vision helps us to see and understand the world.

WHAT IS COLOR BLINDNESS?

Approximately 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some degree of color blindness. There are different types of color blindness but the most common is known as ‘red-green color blindness.’

Color blindness (also called color vision deficiency by vision scientists), is a condition in which the retinal cone cells respond to light differently than normal. People with color blindness can usually still see colors but have color confusions or see certain pairs of colors so similarly that they cannot tell them apart.

SEEING WITH COLOR VISION DEFICIENCY

There are different types of color blindness depending on which cone cells are affected. If the red-light cells are affected that is called a protan-type. If the green-light cells are affected it is a deutan-type. If the blue-light cells are affected it is a tritan-type. Each type can be mild, moderate or strong. Simulated images of color blindness (as shown below) can give us some insight into how the color blind eye sees differently.

ADDRESSING THE PROBLEM

The underlying cause of most color vision deficiencies is due to the red and green-sensitive retinal cone cells having an overlapping response to light. Instead of responding separately to each wavelength of light, their response is highly similar. To compensate for the overlap, the EnChroma lens contains proprietary optical materials that selectively remove particular wavelengths of light exactly where the overlap is occurring.